CJFF Presents: Kimmapiiyipitssini - The Meaning of Empathy

Virtual Screening

When: November 21, 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM

Cost: Free

Release Year: 2021

Runtime: 124 minutes

Director(s): Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

Synopsis:

Follow filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as she creates an intimate portrait of her community and the impacts of the substance use and overdose epidemic. Witness the change brought by community members with substance-use disorder, first responders and medical professionals as they strive for harm reduction in the Kainai First Nation.

Director: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

Elle-Máijá Apiniskim Tailfeathers is a Blackfoot and Sámi actor, producer, filmmaker, and curatorial assistant from the Kainai First Nation. She has won several accolades for her film work. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Tailfeathers began acting in the late 2000s before embarking on a career as a filmmaker.

Elle-Máijá was named the 2018 Sundance Film Institute's Merata Mita Film Fellow and is an alumni of the Berlinale Talent Lab, the International Sámi Film Institute's Indigenous Film Fellowship, and the Hot Docs Doc Accelerator Lab. She is also a member of the Embargo Collective II. She was presented with the 2014 Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award as an emerging artist in film and new media and a Vancouver Women in Film Kodak Image Award for her work on A Red Girl's Reasoning. Her short documentary Bihttos was included in the TIFF Top Ten Canadian Shorts and also won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Short at the Seattle International Film Festival. She is directing a feature-length documentary (with the support of the National Film Board of Canada and the Hot Docs Cross Currents Fund) on her community's brave response to the ongoing opiate-crisis. She co-wrote and co-directed the narrative feature, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, with Kathleen Hepburn which premiered at the 2019 Berlinale in the Generation Program.